Gambling Probs

[milehigh]

I finally put 2 and 2 together. Talked earlier of someone who kept asking me for sessions, and they had to be right now, no matter where I was - at work or whatever.

I think she might have a bit of a gambling prob.


Years ago, there was this very nice Russian young lady SP downtown I saw on occasion. She confided to me she had gambling debts so high she couldn't keep up to them.

I know its an addiction, so I feel bad for these folks.


I also had a buddy at work who stole money at work to pay his debts - he was scared shitless when he could not come up with the bucks to pay whoever lent him money.

 

[simon482]

i was a t a friends house and he asked me to borrow 600$ and i said no, cuz i knew he was a loser and i would never see it again. he was all weird and jumpy and couldn't sit still, figured he was railed up on coke or something. then i see a car pull in the driveway and he starts really freaking so i get the story out of him. owes 2k to a guy and they want to break some fingers cuz he been fucking them around and he is 600$ short. so i told him i would buy his car stereo off him for 600$, he bought it for close to 3k a few months before. he got really angry at me and called me every name in the book for a min or 2, then when the guys were walking down the path to his house he got real nervous and told me okay, i told him he had to install it and he got really fucking mad but said okay.

they came to the door and he told them what he had and i said to come with me to the bank for the rest. 1 guy came with me, 1 guy stayed there. i got the cash gave it to the guy and we went back. i was laughing with the dude al the way there and back, told him about buying the stereo and thanked him lol. get back and my buddy has a black eye, i got told that was for him being dumb and making them come look.

he never gambled after that but did get beat down on a drug debt.

 

[simon482]

What a humanitarian you are.

saw a situation, took advantage. if the dude wasn't a pussy he would have taken the broken finger or 2 and considered the debt paid, but no. he is afraid of pain like a fag.

 

[simon482]

With friends like you...

i have had lots of broken fingers and knuckles, hell i been walking around with a bone sticking out of my ankle for 2 years now. dude needs to man up. if you ain't been hurt i your life, you're doing it wrong.

 

[simon482]

Your dad punch you in the nose lots of times?

a lot of other people did lol

 

[simon482]

I hate to disagree with you my friend but I side with Simon on this one.

If the guy didn't have to feel the pain of his obligations which included not only the stereo but also the black eye, chances are he'd go right out and get himself into the same shit all over again. He'd do it UNTIL he expereinced consequnces he no longer found acceptable. That is the way it is with these addictions.

Not saying sSimon was anything but an opportunistic skeez to his friend, but he actually did the guy a favour.

who is to say he wouldn't have ended up with a broken leg or 2 or worse. besides his stereo sounded better in my car.

 

[Ceiling Cat]

 

[Nickelodeon]

I think Simon did do him a favor. He showed him that there are worse people in life than loan sharks, especially those that you think might be friends. Object lesson learned.

 

[fmahovalich]

In this particular case...if the debtor need a little beat down....and I agree he did...


SIMON deserves twice that........... $3,000 radio.....???? For $600????

Talk about extortion!!

If i was around that situation, you would have felt my wrath too SIMON!!!!

 

[rld]

i have had lots of broken fingers and knuckles, hell i been walking around with a bone sticking out of my ankle for 2 years now. dude needs to man up. if you ain't been hurt i your life, you're doing it wrong.

Don't have a big problem with your commercial offer but gotta disagree on the fingers and bones. Played O-line for many years and broke all of my fingers and thumbs at least once each. I am now in my mid 40s and the arthritis is setting in, glad I don't have to type for a living.

 

[Narg]

Not that Simon needs the help ... but I agree with him on this.

Simon's buddy apparently borrowed from a shark and had no problems asking Simon for a "loan" that was never going to be repaid. Simon's choices were to do nothing, waive goodbye to $600 or get something in exchange for the money he was never going to see again. The first gets his buddy a beatdown, the second gets Simon screwed out of $600, so the third choice looks good to me.

... and before anyone tells me I cannot know that the guy would not repay the $600 - I trust Simon's opinion on that. He knows the guy and we don't. I suspect most of us have "friends" that we don't trust or don't respect. I know I do.

Finally, 4Tees - your suggestion presumes that Simon and his buddy are really close friends. There are many levels of friendship - from guys I'd hide the body for ... to guys I'd just have a drink with. The guy Simon's speaking of is a "loser" who'd use his friends to get out from under a debt to a shark. The guy could have sold the stereo himself, but he'd rather try and scam Simon for the money.

 

[Carling]

never trust degenerate gamblers...good for you simon...teach the guy a lesson...

 

[rhuarc29]

We're just going to have to disagree here. My view is that showing compassion is better than showing cruelty. It is the embarrassment of being put in the situation that will cause change, and not the punishment dolled-out by Simon. What Simon could have done, BTW (though I didn't think of it first, but he could have afterwards), is give the $600, take the stereo, sell it on eBay or Craigslist for twice or three times the $600, recoup the loan, and take the extra money and either donate it to a rehab centre, or tell his friend "You check into rehab and I'll pay some of your debts off with the extra cash" or "I'll pay for your therapy/counselling with the extra cash I get from selling the stereo."

I had an SO in my life who in many cases was treated like shit by her family. There was one point where we had the opportunity to really treat them like shit. I wanted to do it, but she said "If we do like them, we become them". Simon could have done much better than what he did, and done so with grace and elegance. Instead he was just a thug and no better than the thugs who gave him the black eye.

I have to agree with 4tees here. People seem to think there's some magical breaking point for addicts where the consequences get severe enough that they change their tune. People don't operate like a supply and demand chart. Addicts don't think of trade-offs. Usually they dig themselves an ever-deeper pit and either live in it until they find help or until they die.

Simon's "friend" is living in fear of his life, gets roughed up, is obviously ashamed since he really didn't want to tell Simon his story, and he adds to his misery by offering 20% of the value for his stereo. Mind you, I don't think I really have a problem with what Simon did, just with the idea that it may have helped his friend in the long run.

 

[OddSox]

Seems to me that Simon's method worked pretty well...

...he never gambled after that but did get beat down on a drug debt.

At least partly - the guy learned the part about quitting gambling, but not the part about paying your debts!

 

[FatOne]

i was a t a friends house and he asked me to borrow 600$ and i said no, cuz i knew he was a loser and i would never see it again. he was all weird and jumpy and couldn't sit still, figured he was railed up on coke or something. then i see a car pull in the driveway and he starts really freaking so i get the story out of him. owes 2k to a guy and they want to break some fingers cuz he been fucking them around and he is 600$ short. so i told him i would buy his car stereo off him for 600$, he bought it for close to 3k a few months before. he got really angry at me and called me every name in the book for a min or 2, then when the guys were walking down the path to his house he got real nervous and told me okay, i told him he had to install it and he got really fucking mad but said okay.

they came to the door and he told them what he had and i said to come with me to the bank for the rest. 1 guy came with me, 1 guy stayed there. i got the cash gave it to the guy and we went back. i was laughing with the dude al the way there and back, told him about buying the stereo and thanked him lol. get back and my buddy has a black eye, i got told that was for him being dumb and making them come look.

he never gambled after that but did get beat down on a drug debt.

So while Fat Tony and friend were walking down the path, Mr Gambler had the time to go into his car, uninstall his car stereo from his car and install it into Simon's car as well as getting any tools he needed for the job.

Either Simon lives on a 100 acre estate or he is telling a little fib here and you people need to start reading his stories rather than skimming them.

Also I doubt that a gambling druggie would have stopped on the basis of just that alone.

 

[Petzel]

It's never easy to take the high road or do the right thing.

 

[Narg]

It's never easy to take the high road or do the right thing.

That's a truism ... and therefore frequently false. It is very often easy to take the high road or to do the right thing. Whether an action is morally "right" is unrelated to its complexity.

That said, Simon's story invites us to express our personal moral judgment of his actions. Given his (brief) description of his "friend" and given certain assumptions I have made (not all of which I have spelled out), I do not consider Simon's actions to be immoral.

Simon's "friend" wanted to commit fraud by pretending to borrow $600 that he had no intention of repaying. Rather than be scammed, Simon gave him the opportunity to obtain the funds legitimately by selling a car stereo. The significant discount in the price at which the stereo was sold merely reflects the timing of the sale and the number of competing bidders (i.e. the seller needed the funds immediately and Simon was the only possible source).

Nothing immoral about it.

... and 4tees, if someone tries to defraud you, does that affect the compassion you would display to their plight?

 

[simon482]

So while Fat Tony and friend were walking down the path, Mr Gambler had the time to go into his car, uninstall his car stereo from his car and install it into Simon's car as well as getting any tools he needed for the job.

Either Simon lives on a 100 acre estate or he is telling a little fib here and you people need to start reading his stories rather than skimming them.

Also I doubt that a gambling druggie would have stopped on the basis of just that alone.

you are not very smart at all. i got the stereo from him the next day not while they were walking down then driveway.

 

[simon482]

this was the kind of guy that played sob stories and woe is me all the fucking time and hit people up for money on a constant basis and no one ever got anything back from him. i only stopped there on my way to somewhere else when all this shit went down. i didn't consider him a friend, just a guy i hung out with when i was needing to kill time to go somewhere else. he is not the kind of person you want to be around for long cuz you would start hearing his woe is me crap.

everyone knows the kind of guy i am talking about and has a person they know like this guy. he is not a person i would help out and after years of him showing up at parties and never bringing beer and always showing up in the line when the party favours came out i saw a way to hit the guy back the way he always hit us.

it was a moment of opportunity and i took it, now before you all judge me and say i am a bad guy for fucking this loser over there are things about me you don't know and should be considered. not that i need to share them with you or anything, you all think i am a bad guy for fucking over someone that fucked over everyone he knew. anyway, there have been times i have taken serious hits for good friends, there are times i have had bones broken sticking up for people, in high school i would knock the fuck out of the guys that picked on the retarded kids (fast eddie was a good friend of mine), the other thread i said i pulled out stitches and staples in my legs with pliers was from kicking a guy in the face that hit his girlfriend.

so yeah i fucked a guy that deserved it, who gives a fuck, life lesson for him, don't be a fuck up and bad shit won't happen but i have done way more on the good said of the line.

 

[FatOne]

you are not very smart at all. i got the stereo from him the next day not while they were walking down then driveway.

And yet from the post below
"hit people up for money on a constant basis and no one ever got anything back from him."

You never mentioned the next day thing, but I would consider it kinda dumb to trust someone like that to make with the stereo the day after he got 600 bucks from me, especially when he was so pissed off with me.